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Social Construction Of False Necessities And The Material Basis Of Socio-Legal Power: A Reply To Irrationalism In Critical Legal Studies Critiques Identifying Latent Social Violence As A Potential New Material Foundation For Systematic Socio-Legal Theory, Samantha Godwin

Pace Law Review

This Article is deliberately unconventional and exploratory. It begins by raising many conceptually problematic questions which cannot be answered simply or definitively. The point is not to provide any one right answer for these questions but to raise possible directions for new lines of inquiry rather than accepting the theoretical dead end that is irrationalism. I do not necessarily hope to offer a new systemizing theory that can withstand rigorous critique, but rather to show that such attempts remain possible and worthwhile even after the influence of post-modernism and the deconstruction of the most significant social theories.